The Quitting Game

For some NASCAR teams, starting a racethen parking after only a few lapsis a way of life.

Last October, 53 cars showed up at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, in Charlotte, North Carolina, to compete for 43 starting positions in the Dollar General 300 NASCAR Nationwide Series race, which made it a tough field to crack. Defying the odds, little-known Johnny Chapman blistered the 1.5-mile speedway with a lap averaging more than 180 mph and qualified 11th in his No. 90 MSRP Motorsports Chevy, curious-looking because it was all white and without sponsor decals.

The burly, 40-year-old Chapman was elated when he pulled into the garage. “We had some stuff clamming up in the car during practice,” he said. “They told me they had it fixed, so I trusted the crew and just drove it in there to see if it would stick or not,” he said. “I just have to thank these guys and thank the good Lord for letting me be able to do what I love to do.”___________________________________________________

Johnny Chapman waits to qualify his start-and-park car.

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But before the green flag fell that night to start the race, Chapman quietly relinquished his hard-earned 11th spot and dropped to the back of the pack. This move raised no eyebrows in his pit because he had no pit crew. The only evidence that the pit was occupied was the presence of a lone, unattended tool cart.

After eight laps, rain stalled the race, and as the other cars eased down pit road, Chapman and his teammate, Terry Cook, driving the No. 91 car, headed to the garage, parked in their stalls, shut off their engines, and quit. Chapman was still all smiles, and after a round of handshakes and high-fives, he headed inside the team transporter to change into street clothes.

NASCAR’s official race report declares that both cars dropped out of the race after eight laps because of a vibration. Before you conjure up a vision of cars shaking so violently that they rattled the fillings in their drivers’ teeth, we should let you in on a little secret. “Vibration” was a ruse. The cars were running fine. The drivers just quit. And that had been the plan all along. With no pit crews to service their cars, they had to quit.___________________________________________________

Johnny accepts congratulations after making a race.

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Welcome to the strange, largely unpublicized workings of “start-and-park” teams, where dropping out of NASCAR races by design is a new form of motorsports competition. Each week in 2008, for a handful of teams in the Nationwide series, the decision to start and park after only a few laps bridged the divide between losing one’s shirt and actually making a few bucks.

Chapman’s car won $21,358 from the race purse, while Cook’s effort yielded $21,318, so MSRP Motorsports won a total of $42,676 that weekend at Charlotte. MSRP probably spent $20,000 to enter, practice, and qualify the two cars, so their profit might have been about $22,600.

But the profit was only theirs if they quit. Had they run the full race, the cost of as many as six sets of tires per car and the engine wear and tear alone would have wiped out any take-home earnings, and the cost of fielding a pit crew would have sent the team deep in the hole.

This is why teams need big-time sponsorship. Top sponsor deals, even in this No. 2 series, are estimated at $4 million a year, which works out to almost $115,000 per race—10 times the budget of a start-and-park car.